


Soft Lines

by Vee



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Retail, M/M, miles is kind of a scrub, miles is kind of a slut, no one dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 20:51:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1831849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waylon managed the ladies’ formal department at Murkoff’s; once a dazzling mecca of high-end labels and prohibitively expensive price tags, now down to half of the third floor and only then because of the space needed for bridal fittings and alterations. The fact that a guy like Waylon came to manage it was enough of an oddity to tip anyone off that the end was nigh, but according to him, he was actually one of the miraculous few who’d survived in the department, and not just because he grew up with three spoiled older sisters and knew how to talk to ladies who could spend $2,000 on a single dress.   </p><p>Which is why he needed me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, Outlast fic, let's do this. 
> 
> A/U in which everyone just works boring retail jobs and they have to deal with behavior patterns and everyday annoyances and breaking harmful relationship cycles rather than… you know… horror/survival game stuff. Everyone’s happy or at least everyone has the potential to be happy. Basically, though, put these guys in a normal setting, bring the bullshit down to manageable levels, and run them through a slow work night together and see where things lead.
> 
> Who knows, I've been sitting on this idea for weeks and developing it, so if people like it I'll probably keep it going happily. 
> 
> Eddie needs someone like Miles to call him out on his assholery is what I'm getting at eventually here.

One of those things you’re encouraged to do when writing about yourself, from your own voice, but still trying to appeal to the widest audience, is to lead with a confession. Not too much, of course; don’t set yourself up as a pity case, but also don’t make it self-aggrandizing. Give your audience that much credit. Find a happy medium and tease the potential for a story behind it. It makes you seem less intimidating, more human, relatable at the very least. If you do it right. I’ve been blogging about my misadventures in the belly of the American retail beast for ten years and it’s still a technique that eludes me. But in trying to figure out how to toe off on this departure from my usual fare, I think I’ve got it:

I always thought Waylon Park was gay.

And before anyone throws the concept of a wedding band in my face, please understand I’m already rolling my eyes and ten steps ahead of you. You see, it is the year of our Lord 2014 and as far as I know humankind has evolved past whatever once made the body forcibly reject a ring being placed on a certain finger of an adult without a legally recognized marriage license. Of course I saw the wedding ring and so I just kind of assumed he was spoken for, which is probably the only reason I didn’t go beyond the usual snide flirting that accompanied most of our interactions.

That, and the fact that I remained unconvinced that my social skills were enough to woo a cute guy with a nice job and high cheekbones, but I digress. He came over after work, or before work, or sometimes during work, crossing the street from Murkoff’s to hang out in the Gamestop where I’d worked for a record-setting eight months. Since the clientele usually consisted exclusively of professional dudebros from the nearby Air Force base, dudebros from the college, and dudebros-in-training from the local public school system, I ran with the opportunity to talk to another guy in his late 20’s who played and enjoyed _Gone Home_. 

And, as has been established, I assumed he was gay, which kept me looking forward to the few cumulative hours we spoke to each other every week. He had top-notch skills, and not just with games. At one point Waylon set his iPhone to film the sales floor of his department at Murkoff’s, and sent the footage via livestream to his iPad, which he kept out while he shot the breeze with me, just in case things got busy and he needed to go back. He was inventive like that, and I encouraged him to lean into that talent.

“Well,” he said with an important sigh on the night everything changed, “if the company would decide what it wants to do with itself, I might have a reason to hold onto my job there.”

“What do you mean?”

Waylon narrowed his eyes at me, sort of smiled, and that was the point of no return. “Can you keep a secret?”

People drop that question so casually, and what else do they expect you to say? In my case I actually had to be contentious; it was part of my full disclosure policy with those I considered friends. “You know what I do for my secondary income stream, right?” I went back to alphabetizing the used games, since I was the only person who did that and I’d gotten myself into the routine.

“This is the sort of thing I don’t think you’d get away with putting on your blog, Miles.”

Intrigued, I turned around and forgot about the games. “I’m listening. I still can’t say I’m 100% on the secret-keeping thing but keep talking.”

With a shrug, Waylon went on. He would have gone on, anyway. I knew by that point how much he liked to talk. “You know how I said they switched the electronics and apparel floors over the summer?”

“Yeah.” Murkoff’s opened sometime in the 1950’s, committing itself to a vision of consumer quality not unlike Macy’s and Bergdof-Goodman’s. In fact, the name was obviously chosen to capitalize on Bergdof’s since the store tried to brand itself as the premiere high-end retailer of the Rockies. By the 90’s it was back down to a single store, the flagship store, the one right across from a low-rent strip mall, and the company was trying to get in on that sweet, sweet consumer electronics market in order to stay relevant. To make a long story short, people buy more cell phones than mink coats and purple label ties, and since the death of old man Murkoff three years ago the brand has been changing drastically. Moving apparel to the third floor and electronics to the ground was supposedly a tactic to elevate the luxury of the items on the higher floors, but it didn’t take a business degree to see right through that horseshit. “If you’re implying that Murkoff’s is going to slowly suffocate the soft lines out of its inventory, I hate to break it to you, but that’s obvious.”

Waylon rolled along with my caustic way of putting things, which I admired. If I had to meet myself and hold an actual conversation, I assure you I’d call myself an asshole at _least_ twice. “No, that’s not the big reveal. The fact is – and maybe this is a little unethical, but hey, I’m bored a lot at work and I like to bring in my laptop to work on coding here and there…”

I took a step closer to the counter, moving in slow motion. “You? Unethical? You don’t strike me as a type.”

“I try to stay on the straight and narrow, but one of the realities of playing around with code in places you’re not allowed is that you always get to that point where you go too far.”

“Did you hack Murkoff’s?” I smirked, tried to be charming, probably failed.

Waylon rolled his eyes and looked back down at his copy of Game Informer, which he was just using as a prop to flip through anyway. “Is it 1997? No, I just… maybe… ran a data-mining script on the store website. And I found something pretty crucial.”

In lieu of prompting him again, I just crossed my arms.

Never one to be melodramatic, Waylon kept looking at a review of Arkham Knight and dropped the bomb like it was nothing. “Murkoff’s is – _maybe_ – acquiring Mount Massive.”

I paused for a beat and so did Waylon. When he looked up at me, I finally found an appropriate reaction. “Fuck all the way off.”

“I’m serious. There are pages already drafted, celebrating the news, just waiting there. I don’t know the timetable, because things are incomplete and I stopped fucking around in that shit as soon as I saw it, but—“

“Shit.”

Okay, pause.

If I’d worked at the Macaroni Grill or the Men’s Wearhouse or any of the other places in that strip mall, I probably wouldn’t have cared about this news. I wouldn’t have known what it meant. But Waylon knew I knew. Mount Massive, even as a startup, was the most insanely ambitious programming and electronics outfit known. In the right circles, you heard the name and instinctively pulled the most conflicted, excited face possible. The innovations were undeniable but there were some dark implications in Mount Massive’s short history. A lot of MM’s funding got snatched away so investors could throw money at Oculus Rift instead, and development slowed to a crawl. No one had heard from them in months, actually, not even in the small insider circles that kept their ears to the ground. 

“So do you think it’s just going to be a storefront for the technology, or—“

Waylon held up his hands, already determined to ignorance. “I have no idea. I really have no idea. I might even be wrong, those pages could mean anything.”

“Okay, then; if you had to guess?”

“My conjecture? They buy out the tech, rehire the developers at a better wage using whatever they can get from liquidating the soft lines and firing _us,_ and then rebrand as a consumer electronics epicenter, revolving around Mount Massive tech.”

“That seems… excessive.”

“You don’t know Blaire.” The purported jerkass who took over after Murkoff died and started the ball rolling on the entire rebranding thing in the first place. He’d been putting Waylon through hell, apparently.

It was jaw-dropping news, but I’d learned not to get my hopes up for anything. In fact, my unnatural talent for hitting the payroll running on bad business situations had been the entire basis for the blog I kept since I was nineteen. It was a modestly successful and ongoing study on life as a retail wage slave. I’d managed the façade impeccably over the years; writing under an assumed name and maintaining a whimsical air of fiction about the entire thing kept me anonymous to potential employers, but shrewd readers were absolutely able to pick up on which companies I talked about, even if they had no idea which specific store I worked for. A good portion still believed it was at least partially make-believe, reluctant to accept that anyone would willingly throw in the towel at eleven jobs in as many years. I wouldn’t say willing, though, not exactly. Simply, I refuse to put up with bullshit. I like to earn money and do my job, but I also like to blow the lid off how horrible the entire retail sector is. The minute something irks me just enough, I move on. Life’s too short and I’m not creative enough to write fiction anyway.

But that’s not where this whole thing ends up going. My usual readers weren’t prepared for this, either, trust me.

You’d think my interests would have collided with my passion, leading me down the obvious path of writing about Murkoff’s and its already unbelievable gamble in the tech arena. When I smirked and asked, “So in the meantime, do you need any help over there?” it was certainly on my mind.

When Waylon smirked right back and answered, “Funny you should mention that…” I had no idea what I was really getting myself into, and it had nothing to do with the more-exciting-on-paper world of business models shifting like tectonic plates and Mount Massive flirting with the uncanny valley, no, not at all.

But, then again, I still thought Waylon was gay, which shows you how much I knew about anything.

\--

Waylon managed the ladies’ formal department at Murkoff’s; once a dazzling mecca of high-end labels and prohibitively expensive price tags, now down to half of the third floor and only then because of the space needed for bridal fittings and alterations. The fact that a guy like Waylon came to manage it was enough of an oddity to tip anyone off that the end was nigh, but according to him (over drinks that night after he kept talking right up until and long after I closed up the store) he was actually one of the miraculous few who’d survived in the department, and not just because he grew up with three spoiled older sisters and married a woman who made about three times more than he did per year and he knew how to talk to ladies who could spend $2,000 on a single dress.  

Which is why he needed me.

I was still reeling on the sudden knowledge that Waylon had a wife, contemplating how stupid I’d been to think otherwise as I crushed ice between my teeth at the Bennigan’s bar. Maybe I should have been listening more closely, but I already mentioned how Waylon can yammer on. As such, I was just as likely to tune him out under normal circumstances.

“So, you can see my dilemma.”

“Yeah.” Pretending I was listening: a talent I wasn’t proud of.

“So, if you’re up to the challenge,” he laughed drily and I realized it was too late to double back and ask him to clarify, “I can definitely bring you in. Better you than a stranger. It’s difficult to explain the delicate nature of the departmental hierarchy in interviews.”

I gave my boss at Gamestop two weeks’ notice and Waylon penciled me in for training around my last few shifts. I hated working soft lines, hated selling clothing, and especially hated trying to pretend to know anything about fashion, but the allure of poking around in Murkoff’s business until I was inevitably laid off in the changeover was irresistible.

Whatever challenge he’d been talking about was inconsequential, I figured. It only nettled my brain twice before I put on the only suit I owned, convinced myself I looked decent, and took the escalator to the third floor to fill out the requisite paperwork.

Funny, though, how once you realize you don’t have a chance with someone you never thought you liked in the first place, you suddenly become aware of how much you liked them. A bizarre centrifugal force of self-assurance fighting denial took over as Waylon walked me around the department and gave me a half-hearted tour. I remembered times over the last few months when I’d dropped blatant hints that I was single, that I was gay, just putting the facts out there like advertising my desperation was anything but shameless. Waylon was adorably attractive, and I had so few friends that I’d zeroed in on him in recent weeks without even noticing. It took me the first hour of the day to get over that, and during that first hour not one single customer showed up to even glance at formalwear. Waylon took me to the back room to fill out my paperwork, sarcastically remarking that “relief should be here soon, in a manner of speaking.”

The back room and office were across from the sewing room, which Waylon flippantly referred to as “the lab” when we passed. Several large windows looked in on the large space – more window that wall, actually – so I craned my neck to peek in. I’d never seen anything in a retail environment look like such a creative wilderness. Replete with dress forms and half-finished garments and notations tacked up everywhere, it seemed like a sanctuary from and within the business itself. “Cool,” I muttered, pausing to take it in before Waylon pointed me at a dull little table on the opposite side of the hall.    

“Yeah, just don’t go in there,” he sighed like I was supposed to know what he meant by that, and I was nettled again by the fact that I hadn’t listened to him at Bennigan’s and had no easy way of rectifying my ignorance.

“Kay, chief.”

“Since this is all a formality, really, do you need me to put down addresses and stuff?” I scowled at the application. Filling those things out was my least favorite part of the job-hopping process.

“If you’d like severance, if it comes to that, if anything like that even happens, not that I know anything, then yeah, you’d better have your paperwork looking legit.”

I sighed and went back to the boring details while Waylon watched the row of camera feeds pointing at different angles of the empty sales floor. He sat on the table with his feet up on the nearest chair, eating what smelled like a breakfast burrito. I was about to comment on his remarkable stretch of silence when he suddenly informed me, “Okay, he’s here. Remember what I told you and just… be inconspicuous.”

I kind of snorted and nodded, resisting the urge to comment because I had no idea what to say. Waylon jumped down from the table, threw away the last of whatever he’d been eating, and was wiping his hands on a cheap paper towel when someone else entered the room. I was facing away from the door, as luck would have it, so I upheld my part in being inconspicuous, but my writing slowed when the smell of breakfast burrito was replaced by cologne just subtle enough to probably be expensive.

Whoever it was – and, judging from Waylon’s preamble, I should have known already – slowed to a dramatic stop next to the table. I contained my urge to glance over.

“Who’s this?”

First impressions are so important. A voice, and the tone of that voice, can set up an entire world of assumption in the brain of a new acquaintance.  So my first thought was “asshole,” because I was being referred to rather obviously with all the enthusiasm of someone asking where that pile of garbage came from.

While I briefly wondered whether to ingratiate myself, Waylon took point. “This is the new part-timer; he’s just in to fill out paperwork.”

The briefest pause; just long enough to convince me that a _look_ was being thrown. “What happened to Paul?”

“Paul quit,” Waylon said firmly, importantly, and suddenly I knew I’d have to figure out how to make it clear I hadn’t been listening at Bennigan’s because I was curious about what called for such a pointed response.

“Hm. How odd. Good riddance.” The newcomer – and my future coworker, whether I liked it or not – passed the table and I figured it was a good chance to look up, just to give my first impression more to go on than a pissy tone of voice.

I didn’t know how to feel, then.

I mean, even if this guy ended up being the worst sort of unpleasant, if we worked together it still meant I got to – had to – look at him. The “got to” made me want to thank Waylon; the “had to” made me sort of hate him. Fuck, but this guy was the worst kind of hot. Not adorably attractive like Waylon, but the sort of hot that disqualified me immediately and made me remember what a scrub I’d turned into. I was so busy trying to figure out how someone built like that (a gladiator, basically) and dressed like that (a Tom Ford ad, basically) managed to pull off haircut like that (…Macklemore undercuts aren’t illegal?) I failed to realize I was staring. I wound up being stared right back at, and since I’m a gold star charmer, I decided to just say whatever came to mind. “That’s an interesting haircut.”

I’m a jerk most of the time, to most people, is the problem.

Since I’d proven myself less than worthy of any positive attention, I couldn’t exactly fault him when he looked over at Waylon without another word. “So is it you and me today?”

There was a slither in his voice that I couldn’t quite place, but it made my skin crawl nonetheless. Not exactly in a terrible way, either. I went back to plugging my laughable work history into the necessary blocks.

Waylon sighed. “Yes, Eddie, it’s you and me.”

“Beautiful!” He chirped, in not at all the sort of way I expected from someone of his stature. The name didn’t suit him. I’d expected something more sophisticated. Less dorky, at the very least.

“I’m leaving at 6:00 so you’ll have to watch the floor after that.”

I hazarded another glance up, and Eddie just shrugged in Waylon’s direction, smiling, still slightly off center of everything I presumed.

“Any excuse for the chance to work with you, darling.”

It was like that bounced right off Waylon where it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Since he only cleared his throat and looked up at the camera feeds again. “Oh, look. What do you know? Someone’s actually here.”

A tense silence followed, and Eddie cocked his head at the expectant look he was being given. “I’m not even clocked in yet.”

Without a word, Waylon lifted his hands in mocking surrender and walked out of the room to do his duty on the sales floor. Part of me wanted to get up and follow him, but I stayed rooted to my seat in hopes that things wouldn’t get even more awkward.

Mercifully, Eddie just poured himself a cup of coffee and breezed out, not even doing me the favor of another glance. I’d been told to stay inconspicuous, so I turned around to watch him walk across the hall – and enjoy the way those pants hugged his ass – as inconspicuously as possible.

Obviously the customer wasn’t interested in much, because Waylon was back before I could even return to my paperwork. I’d been caught staring again, but tried to play it off. “So they didn’t buy anything?”

“No…”

“So uh… who was that?” I pointed my thumb in the general direction of the hallway, as if I could mean anyone else.

“That was Eddie,” Waylon replied, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes at me.

“Yeah, I caught that. But… who…”

He cut me off with a sigh loud enough to… well… cut me off.

I fessed up. “Sorry, I kind of… missed whatever briefing you gave me, if there’s something I’m supposed to know.”

Waylon nodded slowly, collecting himself before he gave me the short version. “In bullet points, then?”

“If you don’t mind. My attention span’s not being a pal today.”

“Eddie Gluskin. Fitter and tailor, wants to be a designer, whatever. Been with Murkoff’s like, ten years? I think? A long time, at any rate. Liar. Asshole. Extraordinarily gifted at three things: sewing shit, talking people – especially women - out of their money, and making his coworkers quit. Oh, and driving me up the wall, he’s good at that, too, but for some reason I put up with it.”

“Why?” I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms.

“Because of the first two things he’s good at. And do you know how hard it is the fire someone after they’ve been in a job for so long? It’s… like… he’d actually have to kill someone.”

Nodding, I gave a quiet laugh. “Well, he’s good at his job, at least. I think I can handle him.”

I must have put an inflection on that somehow, because a grunt of displeasure ripped from Waylon’s throat. “No, Miles.”

“What?” I tried to feign innocence. Then, just as quickly, I decided to play it up. He’d caught me staring, after all. “Hold on… am I supposed to _not_ find him attractive?”

“Just _no._ I’ll leave it at that. I need to grab something from the printer, I’ll be right back.” Waylon sighed, I smirked, and on his way out he asked, “I’ll be going past the drink machine if you want something. Water? Sprite? Dr. Pepper?”

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks.”

“Sunkist? Root beer? Powerade?”

“What? No. Stop.”

“Okay, you just seem really thirsty, is all.”

He left before I could react to that appropriately.      


	2. Chapter 2

Within a week I learned most of the important things about working at Murkoff’s: opening procedures, closing procedures, scheduling, generally staying out of Eddie’s way and/or business, and most importantly that I’d need to start using the front door instead of the employee entrance because the same massive dude always seemed to be hanging around the loading dock and for some reason he whispered “pig” at me whenever I passed. Perplexed by the third time this happened – like, you don’t even _know_ me, guy, but I’m not going to tell you off just in case you could have me fired – I wandered in for my afternoon mid-shift with a particularly odd look on my face. Surprisingly, it was remarked upon from the needly depths of the sewing room as I passed. “Are you all right?”

Eddie’s voice sounded pleasantly calm and genuinely concerned, so I leaned into the opportunity to vent. Pausing at the doorway but keeping a respectful distance, I gestured in confusion. “The big bald guy downstairs, what’s his problem?”

Immediately, the subject of my frustration was clear. “Chris.”

“I guess so. About yea tall, looks like he wound up on the wrong side of a belt sander, wears his pants under his gut?”

Eddie nodded, letting my more colorful turns of phrase pass without reaction. “Chris.”

“Anyway, he keeps calling me _pig_. And somehow he’s always there. It’s really unsettling.” I didn’t say anything else, especially nothing about how my side job kept me particularly on edge about such behavior. I didn’t want to be slapped with a lawsuit, especially not before I’d even dug up anything good.

My current plan, considering all the uncertainty, was to compile what I knew on Murkoff’s, confirm what I could, and sit on the info for a while. Maybe Waylon’s words went to my head; I felt the tug of desire to chase this story into my legitimate journalistic break. That, and I was making more notes about my coworkers than I ever had. I mean, there was little else to be done; shifts were interminable, business was scant at best, and talking to Waylon about everyone else was one of the only options for keeping myself awake.

Maybe that evening I’d actually be able to talk to Eddie, as well.

“Hm,” Eddie went back to inspecting a seam but offered what little insight he had. “No one’s really sure what’s gotten into Chris. He used to be management but he got demoted to grunt sales for some reason. He probably ran into trouble with Jeremy.”

Hm, indeed. I’d heard about that. Something about how some people who violated NDC agreements were bumped down so fast it made heads spin, being locked out of all the sensitive info but given bonuses that were cleverly disguised to cover up the fact that they were, in fact, being paid off by Murkoff’s disturbingly powerful lawyers. There were forums brimming with potential dirt from current and former employees, I just had to wade through the bullshit to find the nuggets of truth. It was already proving to be a headache.

“Oh, yeah. Waylon said the management team might as well be called the _Jeremy Blaire Ass-Kissing Committee_.”

Eddie paused in his work and I didn’t have the nerve to meet his eyes long enough to see whether he narrowed them at me. “Did he really say that?”

No, he hadn’t – he’d actually said _Jeremy Blaire Dick-Sucking Committee_ – but I decided to tone it down since Eddie already looked quite judgmental with the glasses he only wore in the sewing room riding low on his nose like a well-dressed, upsettingly buff schoolmarm.

“Well, he said something like that, I don’t know. Sorry, I have no filter.”

“Hm.” Seemingly unimpressed, he returned to the seam.

“That one guy seems nice enough, though. Dick Trager?”

“Rick Trager,” he mumbled in correction.

“Whatever.” Freudian slip, whatever. Not about Trager, god no. Just… in general.

“He’s not.” This time Eddie didn’t look up.

“Okay.” The conversation dried up immediately and after a few awkwardly silent seconds I wandered out of the doorway and onto the sales floor for my shift. Somehow I’d managed not to stumble on the humiliation of blurting out a non sequitur “you look nice,” which he did, but we all know where my mind was.

Maybe that night I would _not_ be able to talk to Eddie.  

Around half past four, after I’d gone over my existing notes for the twelfth time, a couple actually wandered into the formal department and showed immediate interest in purchasing.

“Benefit Gala at the Clyfford Still Museum,” the woman explained with a tight but glittering smile, rolling her eyes in the direction of the man who seemed apologetic enough to be her husband. “Last minute. I need something for tomorrow night and I don’t really want to have to drive all the way back out, so… I’d prefer something that’s perfect off the rack.”

I explained to them right away that I was new and if I seemed to stumble over my information that was the reason. Instead of seeming concerned with this at all, the woman just glanced over the racks and asked, “Do you still carry Badgley Mischka?”

“Yeah, of course, totally!” I showed her to the selection, more excited than I thought I would be at the prospect of a 5% commission. That’s when the actual questions started, like she’d not even heard my disclaimer that I had no idea what I was doing yet.

Luckily, somewhere along the line Eddie had emerged from his cave, as if mention of the Badgley Mischka label was a summoning charm. He shocked me, appearing close by and nearly whispering, “What have you shown them? Anything yet?”

“Not yet,” I caught my breath and turned, nearly wheeling into him with the proximity. Thrown off by the moment, I lifted my hands and patted his chest once in a ridiculous, embarrassing move before explaining what I could manage to fit in one breath.

Immediately, Eddie turned everything on and became a gregarious, charming, and more-than-a-little flamboyant salesman as he proceeded to answer every question with unquestionable authority. Though hardly interested in becoming an expert on the subject, despite getting paid to do the job, I just watched and listened in stunned silence, occasionally nodding as if I had any idea what I was confirming. The woman’s husband had retreated to a nearby bench and was face-down in his phone. I momentarily considered joining him, but Eddie passed me a one-shoulder, ivory gown like he was handling a newborn child, and instructed me to show the young lady to a fitting room.

At my age I should have been immune to being so flustered by an attractive dude, but Eddie had this bizarrely intimidating aura no matter what, like if I put one toe out of line it would be noticed and remarked upon. Why that actually had me even more flustered, for entirely different reasons, I can’t even begin to explain. So I half-stammered over the question of whether he’d still be there to answer any questions, and Eddie smoothly placed a palm on the small of my back. Silenced, with my eyes blown wide open, I heard him say, “I’ll be just a breath away,” in a tone of voice that seemed a little too intimate for the sales floor. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe Waylon was right and I needed to stop thinking with my dick. But maybe… maybe…

I’m not really a salesman in the first place. I like being friends with people and I’ve been poor enough in my life that I feel like any effort to pressure someone into parting with their money is extortion. I don’t like pressuring people into things, period. Bottoms shouldn’t be salespeople. Sorry, is it too early to get that comfortable, as a narrator? Get used to it.

Eddie, on the other hand, seemed right at home putting the suave squeeze on others. I could only hope to channel a little of his mojo as the fitting room door opened and the woman emerged, looking every bit as glamorous as the $990.00 price tag promised.

“That looks really good on you,” was all I could say, smiling and glancing over to the husband for approval. One of the few sales pointers Waylon had already given me was to (his words) _play up the gayness – it makes straight women less wary, in general, and jealous straight men less apt to butt in._

I wondered if Eddie was utilizing the same technique when he appeared at the end of the fitting room hallway and gasped audibly.

“Oh, my dear, that is _ravishing_.”

She’d only given me a cursory nod when I told her she looked good, but Eddie’s more flowery rendition got her complete attention. “Really? I love it. I love the way the back is cut.”

“Yes,” he held on to the word as he stepped closer and maneuvered around her, inspecting the alternately figure-hugging and luxuriously draping fabric. “It makes you look like Nicole Kidman on her way to the Oscars.”

“You know,” I threw in, “I’ve been trying to put my finger on who you look like, and he’s right. Nicole Kidman. That’s it.”

She was nearly my height, flawlessly pale, and had strawberry blonde hair. Statuesque and breathtaking – the gown did her justice, I wanted to say, but that seemed like too much after what Eddie had already offered. Her husband, by contrast, looked more like Patton Oswalt, but I was in no position to judge. I looked like a doofy Dreamworks cartoon, and I needed a haircut.

Ersatz Nicole Kidman knew she was the center of attention, and laughed into her hands for a moment. “I’m flattered!” She said, though she was obviously self-conscious. “How should I wear my hair?”

Eager for ersatz Patton Oswalt’s approval, she turned to her husband. He shrugged, though he did look happy with the vision in well-stitched silk. “You know I like your hair down.”

“Yeah, but this neckline…” She pulled an uncertain face, and even I knew she was absolutely right. The neckline, and the daringly open back, almost required the hair to be taken out of the picture. I was about to offer my advice when Eddie calmly slid in and, with all the ease of someone entirely used to invading peoples’ space, pulled her long blonde hair in his fingers, delicately sweeping it into a twist and holding it against the top of her head. Left with her arms free, the woman turned and posed like a Disney princess, obviously pleased.

“A chignon, I think, or a French twist.” Eddie turned to the husband. “You be the judge. She’ll look stunning either way, and you’ll be hard pressed to have a prettier girl on your arm.”

“That does look real good,” the man said with a thoughtful nod.

“Pardon me again,” Eddie said, letting the hair down gently before stepping away. It was an impressive display, all in all, and the woman ended up buying not only the Badgley Mischka but a pair of crystal-studded Valentino shoes to go with it.

“With those, you won’t even need to have the skirt hemmed,” Eddie drove home the sale for me, flashing me a non-too-subtle smile when he did, and patting my back _again_ when he passed. The sale was still mine, and I made $100 commission from it, just like that. Maybe this was a racket, after all. If only the department averaged more than three non-bridal sales a week. All the bridal commissions went to Eddie, because those invariably required alterations.

The financial thrill lasted maybe two minutes and then I went right back to obsessing over the way he’d touched me and leaned into me and almost-whispered so closely and handled that dress so lightly even though he was built like a truck. I wandered back to the sewing room to thank him, which he said was no big deal as he stood next to a dress form adjusting it for the next client’s measurements. Normally I’m terrible at thanking people, too, but he had no idea how rare an event he’d just witnessed, so it was a quick interaction.

Unsatisfied to simply leave, but needing an excuse to stay and watch Eddie’s fingers at work for a few more minutes, I added, “They were cute.”

“She’s too pretty for him.” Eddie tightened the dial on the waist of his dress form and paused to scan me for a moment. I glanced aside but tried not to seem too thrown off (despite the fact that I also stopped slouching in the doorway immediately and stood up straight). “That’s a shame.”

“Awww,” I clucked my tongue and smirked. “He seemed lovable. We can all hope to be so lovable, and let’s be honest, he has money.”

“How about you? Not the money part, I mean, but do you have a girlfriend?”

That question was the fly ball that popped up and beaned me in the head before I had any idea the play had even started. I took in a sharp breath, and felt the ugly, rashy red of embarrassment rising to my neck and ears as I thought – out loud, unfortunately – over the best way to answer. “Uh… no… that’s… not likely. _In general,_ I mean, that’s unlikely. For me. But… you know, specifically, girlfriend… no girlfriend. No, not… not me.” I rambled and chuckled with all the subtlety of a nuclear explosion.

 To his credit, Eddie hardly seemed fazed. If his fey display at the fitting room mirrors indicated anything about his own proclivities, I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Boyfriend, then? Regardless, who’s the sweetheart? ”

“Um… no one? Nooooo.” I laughed again, and shook my head nervously, hands shoved into my pockets, proving all at once _why_ there was no sweetheart. Miles Upshur: awkward, clumsy duck since puberty. “No one. It’s… been a while since I’ve dated.”

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry if it’s a sensitive topic.”

_No, stop it. You stop that, Eddie Gluskin, being so weirdly polite about things._

“No!” I held up a hand and then used it to rub the balmy back of my neck. “No, I just…” _I have a shit personality and don’t like to compromise my set ways for the consolation prize of sex._ “I’m very introverted.” It was kind of true, at least, and hopefully it gave me a bit of mystique. He’d learn about the personality soon enough.

Eddie paused – the longest pause, the strangest pause, inspecting me the entire time while I tried to avoid meeting his eyes. “That’s a waste. You seem like a perfectly charming gentleman.”

 _I’m not, but thank you. Could you say something that cloying about my boyish good looks so I know where I stand?_ “Thanks.”

And then… the question you absolutely hate to ask someone you want to ride into the next time zone, “So, how about you?”

“I’m currently single. My standards in women are, sadly, very high.”

I tried not to sound too confounded by this, and I also tried not to sound utterly confused. While trying the entire while not to behave like an awkward, clumsy duck, it all proved to be too much. When I finally said, “…oh!” I’m sure it sounded so incredulous that I deserved the poisonous look Eddie gave me. 

“You’d better check the sales floor,” Eddie pointed with a pair of scissors as I visibly deflated. “Maybe lightning will strike twice tonight.”

I wandered back to the sea of gowns and cocktail dresses and stewed in my confusion until Waylon appeared. This time, a petite East Asian woman in yoga pants and a loose-fitting sweater was on his heels. They were in the middle of a conversation when Waylon toasted me with his Starbucks cup in greeting. “—well, you can take a look but I’m telling you, don’t spend the money on a Carolina Herrera dress for one night. We need a new pump for the pool, you could get a pump for the pool instead. Heeey, Miles!”

“Hey.”

The woman smiled at me for a moment but kept talking to Waylon. “I don’t care about the pool, we should get rid of the pool.”

Waylon stopped, turned to her, and sighed like they’d been over it before. “I don’t care about the pool either. But you don’t just get rid of a pool, you know that. Besides, when we finally sell it’ll add to the value.”

“Hnnnn…” she almost dodged when he leaned in for a kiss. This, I assumed, was Lisa Park. Or, as the badge hanging from her lanyard-keychain indicated, Lisa Nguyen-Park. I never would have stood a chance with Waylon, if Lisa made his standards obvious. Even with her hair thrown into a post-gym ponytail, and her face pinched in frustration at her husband, she radiated charisma and beauty. Maybe she was acting sort of petulant, but I’d learn that was par for the course.

Waylon kept walking toward the back room, and turned to gesture at Lisa when she didn’t follow. “Well, did you want to come look at the ones I held back?”

Lisa’s eyebrows, thin and sharp already, bowed in with almost violent severity. “Hell no. He’s back there,” she sneered.

Leaving the conversation at that, Waylon disappeared into the back room with a shake of his head.

“So, hello,” Lisa greeted me sheepishly, tilting her head and her entire body into a slightly awkward greeting. Good, I wasn’t the only awkward one there that evening. “You’re Miles!”

“I am,” I smiled and felt rather brutish shaking her small, soft hand with such enthusiasm. “It’s nice to meet you!”

“I’m Lisa.”

“Yeah, I figured!”

My eye wandered to the rock on her finger. Maybe Waylon did get some considerable help from his father-in-law on certain financial matters, because that diamond was bigger than her thumbnail.

“So you… don’t get along with Eddie?” I asked.

She crossed her eyes and grimaced comically, squeezing a growl from her throat just before she broke it off on a laugh. I had a feeling I’d get along with her. “We have significant differences, to say the least. I just lose my temper around him.” She paused. “I just spent an hour in spin class, I don’t want to deal with that level of denial tonight.”

I cocked my head and was about to follow the line of conversation insinuated by that claim, but Waylon reappeared holding three size 2 dresses in his hands. “Ohhh!” Lisa turned excitedly, eyes lighting up.

“We can’t afford any of these,” he warned her, and I wandered off with a parting nod.

At last, when Lisa departed and Eddie went home for the evening (more like disappeared without even saying goodbye to anyone), Waylon noticed that I seemed distracted.

“Good job on that sale earlier,” he said, looking at the figures.

“Yeah, I really didn’t do much. Eddie handled most of it.”

He nodded. “Well, you still get the commission. And at least someone bought something.”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s still weird, though.”

“Hm? What is?”

“Um,” I wondered how to phrase it, and finally I just blurted it out. “Eddie’s straight? Just… _how?_ ”

“Oh!” Waylon’s mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ and he stepped back from the register to turn completely to me. “Ohhhhhh… okay… so that conversation already happened.”

“Well, not really, but he asked me if I had a girlfriend and… questions followed their natural course.”

“All right, this happened faster than I expected. Um, yeah. About that…

My interest piqued, I propped my leg up against the cash wrap and tilted my head at him. “Yes?”

“Okay. First of all, it’s complete bullshit.” Waylon held up a hand beseechingly, as if I might doubt him. I wanted to believe what Eddie told me about himself – who knew better, after all? – but the vibes pouring off the guy were pretty strong and very gay. “I mean, maybe it’s not 100% bullshit, but I’ve never seen him with a woman or seen him make overtures. Lisa even tried to set him up with one of her friends before either of us really knew Eddie, and that didn’t go well. To say the least. It didn’t even really… _go_. He made a series of excuses until finally we stopped trying. He’s banging some new guy every time I turn around. Not that he _talks_ about this, or brags about this, or would ever admit this, but if you read between the lines and can’t help overhearing conversations, it’s just… man… it should be a fucking series on HBO. But it might be too depressing. Anyway. Then there’s his thing with _me—_ “

“What about you?” I straightened up, beyond curious at that point. Journalists are just gossip-mongers with a job title, after all.

Waylon sighed mightily, as if physically bracing himself to explain it. “I have been for some time, and currently am, the primary target of Eddie’s attention.”

“Bullshit!” I nearly shouted, not that anyone else was around to hear me. The plot twist almost delighted me, and I momentarily forgot about Murkoff’s and the electronics coup and more secrets than I could possibly write about. I just wanted to know about the soap opera that was the formal department. “Well, that does explain why he calls you ‘darling’. I thought that was just some lame friendly thing.”

“No, it’s legit creepy. Before I got promoted he actually asked me out. Several times. The weird thing is, he talked a game almost good enough that hell, even I was thinking my own wife was my imagination, just a negotiable thing. Of course nothing happened, and even if I _had_ been otherwise inclined by preference and availability, wow. So much drama. So much baggage. And he was just… _obviously fucking all these other people_ but he claimed I was different because he actually wanted to _be with_ me, it’s fucking weird. He’s fucking weird!” As Waylon got more and more fired up, his voice rose and he started to gesture with his hands. It was almost adorable to watch, but I respectfully kept from biting my bottom lip on a grin. “And he got so pissed when I told him no and eventually mentioned that I could have him written up for sexual harassment. He tried to twist the story afterward that I'd led him on. And he believes it. Oh man, it was like the world ended. That temper is legendary, and it'll keep him from every goal he has.” Waylon dragged his hands over his face and sort of coughed into a dry chuckle. “I laugh about it now, but that's just because I knew him then and I know him now, and I know he’s ultimately harmless if you can take a few verbal bullets and don’t get too close. So I figure he'll probably set his sights on you at one point. Don't fall for it, don't get involved. It never ends well. Trust me."

“Wow…” I processed the story quickly enough, offered Waylon another worthless note of empathy, and finally put my foremost thought into words as harmlessly as I could. “But… I mean… what if I just wanted to be one of those… random guys—“ Waylon was already shooting daggers into me with his eyes so I shrugged into defensive stance. “ _I’m just saying, is all!”_ I really didn’t care about content of character, I was just eager to get laid and get laid _well_.“I mean, do you think it’s worth it?”

“All right. Settle down, ho. No, I don’t think it’s worth it. I’ve had to break up heated arguments on the sales floor before, when those _random guys_ come around. I only know what I’ve observed, again, but it seems like there’s just… a bad tendency on Eddie’s part to promise the world and then turn around and blame the other party for literally everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if he blamed last night’s waiter for killing his pet hamster when he was five and then called him a whore. It’s just… too much drama. Miles. Listen to me. Do not go down this road.”

I groaned and let my head fall back, until I’d struck quite the dramatic pose of defeat against the wall. “Everyone’s either straight or crazy.”

Waylon nodded. “Lisa’s a psychiatrist, by the way, which is why she can’t stand him.”

“Ah.” I let the silence extend until I knew I’d not be able to avoid the next thought from rattling around in my mind until I asked about it. “Okay, so what about Paul?”

Waylon snapped to stare at me, mouth agape. “ _What_ about Paul?”

I barely smiled. Ah, yes, there it was. “I’ve got good instinct. Reporter instincts.”

Defeated, Waylon gave a flippant gesture and rolled his eyes. “It’s no big deal, but I promised not to say anything so I didn’t. Paul quit because he and Eddie started sleeping together and all of the sudden, just when things started to get slightly serious, there was this massive blowout. Paul was scared to come in for his next shift. And he’s _nice_. He’s a fucking Boy Scout, you’re a Hellspawn by comparison.”

“Thank you.”

"Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m wasting this much time talking about Eddie goddamn Gluskin.” Waylon shook his head and turned away. He threw one arm out, though, and paused. “Again, it's only what I’ve observed. Paul’s the only one I know about personally right now but there’s a string of suspiciously attractive men who come through this department to meet him for lunch. You're the snoop, you figure out what the deal is. But in my opinion no sex is worth that sort of bullshit."  
  
"It's been almost a year for me, Waylon. I’m going to revert to virgin," I said flatly.  
  
Waylon stood by his assertion, but did add with a curious tone: “Okay, I have to know, are you looking for reassurance that you _shouldn’t_ still try to get with that train wreck, or are you looking for an excuse to keep at it? Because--”

I decided to just cut him off, mostly because I couldn’t believe I’d divulged the detail of my dry spell. “Okay, for the record: I thought you were gay, too.”

“Most people do! Lisa did, when we met!” Waylon said brightly. “I am absolutely 100% comfortable with however people want to see me as long as it’s not Eddie goddamn Gluskin salivating over the way I look in white.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s… that is… augh, god, it’s not worth it to go into it. You’ll find out.”

A customer showed up and Waylon jumped at the chance to break off the conversation on that cryptic note, ordering me to clock out because I’d already sat on the clock for fifteen minutes just to keep talking.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miles puts his journalistic instincts to good use (for once), with sexy results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing an outline for a fic ends up backfiring, sometimes, especially when a few bullet points end up bloating a chapter's length like this. It's been a while, I know, but here we are, chapter three! I hope you enjoy! Also, you can find me on [tumblr](http://emper-or.tumblr.com), where I'm hopefully not as embarrassing as I think I am.

Another week passed and I was still waiting to find out what Waylon meant. Shifts came and went without major incident, I dredged up more questions than answers concerning Murkoff’s, the unfinished web pages disappeared from the servers, and I decided to abandon my snooping efforts for the time being. I knew better than to force things. Some things. Blog things. Other things were negotiable, and by the time I realized how downright unhealthy it was to be _offended_ that Eddie’s attention hadn’t yet turned to me, I’d started to snoop in other ways.

Such as the day Paul – who looked every bit like a Paul, and was kind of cute for an obvious pushover – came by to pick up his last check. He breezed in and Waylon handed it off to him with hardly a word. Pretending to be unconcerned, I nonetheless raised an eyebrow at the grab-and-dash. I thought the reaction went unnoticed, but when I announced to Waylon, “I’m taking a break” less than two minutes later, he fixed me with a glare _._

“What? What’s that look for?”

“Miles, no.” Coupled with the way he pointed at me, I couldn’t help feeling like a bad puppy.

“I need to go to Starbucks,” I mumbled. “I’ll be right back; I didn’t have any coffee this morning.”

“You’re running after Paul so you can interrogate him.”

Playing innocent had worked for me exactly 0 times in my life, but it didn’t stop me from trying again and again. “I’m _sorry,_ maybe you mistook me for some weird stalker, but—“

He just waved at the air and shook his head, muttering, “Go on, go. Be back before five so I can clock out when Eddie gets here.”

“Can do!” Like the fact that he was disappointed would dissuade me.

There was a grain of truth to both sides of the story. I had no intention of _interrogating_ Paul – that was rude of Waylon to suggest – but I was certainly eager to introduce myself and try to get a word in. Maybe I was still actively seeking wiser counsel, who knows. Paul would probably be long gone anyway, I thought to myself, and certainly not hanging around Starbucks to kill time. It was worth a shot, at least.

Except he _was_ at Starbucks, conveniently ahead of me in the unreasonably long line. While the ladies between us carried on a conversation about someone’s niece finally getting married or whatever, I glanced up from my phone and stared at the back of Paul’s head long enough that he inevitably glanced over and saw my curious expression.

At first he just smile-nodded and quickly looked away, but was close enough that he couldn’t help hearing me when I said, “Didn’t I just see you?”

“Yeah, I think. Probably.” A quick examination of my lapel revealed my name tag, and Paul only nodded again. “You just started there, didn’t you?”

“A few weeks ago. Just over a month,” I said, pocketing my phone like a good conversationalist who stumbled upon this particular social interaction _completely by chance._ “I think I replaced you. Paul, right?”

Another curt, I’d-rather-be-anywhere-else-but-I-need-caffeine nod. “Yup.”

“I can only assume you moved on to better things. I mean, we’re barely pulling down two grand a night since I started.”

Drily, Paul chuckled. “Yeah, well, there’s that most of the time, and then there’s the nights you sell nothing whatsoever, but then one twenty thousand dollar wedding party comes through and you make an entire week, so it evens out for a while.” I suddenly didn’t care that he hadn’t answered my indirect question about his current occupational whereabouts.

My face does ‘flummoxed’ well. “Twenty thousand dol— what? You’re kidding me!”

The old ladies were shooting stink-eyes between us, and within moments Paul politely offered them his space in line to move closer. “Yeah, that’s… pretty typical. Even with a Shop C bridal gown, you’re looking at about five grand for that, add the tuxes, maid of honor, bridesmaids, shoes, veil, all the other crap they never think about, and yeah. It’s not David’s Bridal; I mean, we’re talking Reem Acra, Vera Wang.” He paused, and momentarily sized me up. It was a subtle move, but I definitely noticed it. “If they go custom, I mean, that knocks off a few thousand, but he’s pretty uppity about his pricing even then.”

There it was. “By _custom,_ you mean Eddie’s designs? By _uppity,_ you mean Eddie?”

Pulling a pricelessly exasperated face, Paul just lifted his eyebrows at me to confirm my suspicions. His silence lasted just a few seconds too long, so I went on. “I mean, his stuff is _good_ , so I can see how—“

“Can I give you a word of advice?”

We were next in line, a fact the barista called to our attention. It interrupted our mutual train of thought long enough to give me the chance I’d wanted. “Sure. I have a few minutes before I need to be back. My name is Miles, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you.” After a cautious pause, he shook my hand and smiled more sincerely than I’d expected. Still a little nervous, but not suspicious. I could work with that.

“I’ll buy your coffee and you can bend my ear. I think I need all the help I can get.”

I didn’t mean about making my way in the small-time fashion world, and I didn’t know whether Paul realized that, but wherever his intentions intersected with mine, we wound up with coffee and a short conversation. His advice was, initially, “Don’t feed his ego.”

Rearing back slightly, I tried to make it seem like intuition when I said, “That sounded a little personal.”

“You shouldn’t need to be sleeping with him to follow that advice, though. Which is another bit of advice – don’t sleep with him.”

 _No promises,_ I wanted to say, but instead I tried to act bewildered. “Whoa, that came out of—“

Paul lifted a hand and waved at the air to dismiss the tension. “I’m sorry. I mean, if you’re already involved – not with him, either, with anyone – that sounds really rude, but—“

“No, no, I’m not… but how did you know I _might_?”

To Paul, it seemed like an understood fact, and his sigh of amusement proved as much. “Waylon only likes to hire gay guys. Who knows why. They sell better, maybe? But it’s probably because Eddie picks all the women apart and intimidates the hell out of the straight guys – except Waylon – so it’s a small price to pay. Turnover… could be better if it weren’t for the simple fact that _no one pays attention to advice.”_

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

It was chillier than either of us expected by the time we were on the patio, and Paul just crossed his arms tighter as he exhaled in disgust. “I lasted two years working there without even, like—“ He paused. He blinked. “—okay, I considered it, definitely, but I was all business. All the time. I was focused. I mean, we were still doing well, then, a couple thousand dollar commission checks every month. Eddie was content to play that stupid game of his, you know, ‘look at me, I love women, I want to marry the perfect girl, blah fucking blah, here let me stick my dick in everything that’s _not_ a woman,’ so the part-timer always became the sacrificial lamb.”

I kind of got what he was saying. “You guys specifically hired people Eddie would sleep with, or at least proposition, and then they’d quit?” Waylon had obviously survived that cruel game.

“You got it.” Sipping his coffee in the pause, Paul shrugged. “Normally, I’d say that’s a situation with a consolation prize, at least, but…” He trailed off on a sly smile, and then just shook his head. “He’s crazy.”

“Right…” Oh, how I wanted to dig deeper right there, but there were less obnoxious questions. “Sorry for prying, but I sort of love gossip.”

“Oh, me too,” he breathed gratefully. “And this seems too over-the-top for all my other friends to believe, so I appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry, it’s good to know.” _Yeah, that’s the way to put it, I guess_. “So you started dating? He wore you down?”

Paul’s eyes rolled in an incredible way. “I wore myself down. And if you asked him, what happened between us was never _dating_. Actually if you asked him, what happened between us never even happened. Whatever. I’m over it.”

He was definitely not over it.

I feared that the conversation had suddenly become sour and awkward, but then Paul barreled ahead with a quick sigh. “He’s an emotionally abusive asshole, pardon my language.” _Aww, he really is a boy scout._ “I mean, I don’t have much of a frame of reference, but I thought everything was great as long as the sex was good and I felt like the center of the universe.”

“Yeah. Been there.” I tried to keep myself in the conversation, chipper and sympathetic.

I could tell, word for word as Paul went on, that he wasn’t the type to unload his frustrations like this. “I mean, with the whole weird dominance and submission thing you’d think I’d have figured it out earlier – that the mind games would eventually move out of the bedroom  – but I was new to that stuff, you know? Didn’t even know I was into it.”

My eyebrows shot up despite my best efforts to remain friendly. “Oh…”

“Anyway, oh my god, sorry.” He started shaking his head and eventually swatted at the air, obviously embarrassed. “I didn’t think I’d have anyone to talk to, and today I’ve had to think about it a lot, so it’s all just pouring out now.”

“No, really, it’s okay. I’m a grown-up, and that’s good to know.” _That is so good to know, you have no idea._ “Kind of goes beyond most work drama I’ve encountered, but…” But that’s what made it so interesting, really. That’s what, somehow, made it more interesting than Murkoff’s shadier developments.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly break room chatter, you know?” When I nodded, Paul went on. “Anyway, my advice still stands: don’t feed his ego. He’ll throw your own words and actions back at you when you least expect it.”

“Oh.” Now that, I did have some minor experience in. I mean, most people have _That One Ex_.

“So yeah, in retrospect, I should have seen it coming.” Paul stuffed one hand in the pocket of his hoodie, and glanced away, long enough to mumble, “Then again, I should have probably seen Eddie coming at some point, too.”

“Oh!” That genuinely took me off guard, and for a moment I was afraid I’d misjudged his meaning. But then Paul looked back at me and fixed me with a glare that said, _yes, that is exactly what I meant_ , and I found myself at a loss for words.

Eventually, after he watched me stammer silently for a few attempts, I finally figured out what had me so bamboozled. “I thought you said the sex was—“

“For me, it was. Oh, god, it was great!” A flash of a telltale pleasant memory faded into a scowl of anger. “But he never puts himself in the moment, you know? And that’s all it is. It’s his own problem, and he’ll never admit to it, but once it’s to that point where it becomes _a problem_ , that’s when it becomes your fault.” Paul grimaced momentarily and rethought his words. “I don’t mean… _your_ fault, I mean—“

“I know what you meant,” I said, and nodded swiftly. At the same time, though, I didn’t know what he meant. Without getting uncomfortably personal, I couldn’t possibly. I glanced at my watch. It was already after 5, but I wasn’t about to run off. Besides, Waylon never stayed upset long. I couldn’t imagine him losing his temper over this. I’d probably just get more disappointed head shakes.

Paul noticed. “You need to get back.”

“Not just yet,” I said, and finally realized how cold I was as I quickly pocketed my watch hand again. “Um, just so I’m clear, because we’re talking in a lot of vagaries, probably because we don’t know each other… You’re telling me he never… you know… _finished_?” Again, I was a grown-up, a liberal arts graduate capable of using more straightforward verbiage, but again, we didn’t know each other.

Paul laughed quietly. “Okay, it’s more complicated than that, but—“ Self-consciousness screwed up his face all of a sudden, like he didn’t want to give Eddie any concession but wanted to remain honest. The truth was always complicated, and that’s what makes gossip so intriguing, the further you dig.

“This is really personal, so… don’t feel the need to clarify. It’s okay. It’s just…”

 “Don’t think I wasn’t good for it, either,” he said sharply.

“That’s absolutely the farthest thing from my mind,” I said, careful not to look too closely at Paul lest it be construed as flirting. Not that he wasn’t _cute_ , but… there were broader chests and more chiseled jawlines to focus on. However, this new information was the only thing that had given me a moment of pause. Which says a lot about me. (I’m a slut, when given the chance.) (I just don’t get out much.) “It’s just that I guess it makes sense, then.”

“Yeah. I told myself the same thing. I saw the cycle play out enough, I should have put the pieces together, but the thing is, there was this overwhelming confidence that I’d be _different_ , you know? Nothing like those other sluts.” He paused. “God, no, I sounded like him for a minute, ugh.”

This time I only nodded silently, just before my ass started to vibrate and I pulled my phone out to receive an earful of concern from Waylon – something about time sheets and Blaire reviewing the cameras to make sure people didn’t take long breaks, and how Waylon didn’t want me to get fired for something that stupid so could I please get back right now?

Before I hurried off, Paul and I exchanged numbers. “Despite how we just met,” he assured me, “I actually don’t talk that much, so I won’t bother you.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I won’t add you on Facebook or anything.”

He wandered back toward the door, presumably for a refill on the coffee he’d sucked down in record-breaking time. There’s a joke there somewhere, and I’m not going to make it. “I just figure that you’re working with him now, and a support group with experience might come in handy.”

“Yeah.” _Oh, yeah, that’s right. I’m just working with him. Nothing more involved or scandalous or complicated, or… anything. Damn._

Back at Murkoff’s, a seemingly one-sided conversation cut off abruptly when I rounded the corner and appeared at the break room door, where Waylon looked relieved to see me and Eddie looked the opposite of that. Obviously, the latter had just arrived for his shift, still wearing the Michael Kors overcoat he cherished so much (the dude loved Michael Kors). He bowed his eyebrows for a moment and glanced at Waylon forlornly. “Darling… I thought we were closing together.”

“Nope!” Waylon said firmly, and slid off the counter to walk past me. “I tried to tell you about four times but you kept talking.”

“Well, you kept listening!” Eddie shot back, and sighed at Waylon’s dismissal. I didn’t even have time to apologize for my lateness; Waylon was already at the computer, clocking out. Meanwhile, I was literally standing in the door fifteen minutes late with Starbucks. Eddie didn’t regard me with any particular greeting, but he also didn’t leave immediately. Heeding Paul’s words, I assessed the situation and decided to play into the best side of my personality; that is, the sarcastic shitlord who calls people out on their bullshit just often enough to be considered an HR nightmare. Sure, I file complaints and stir up things most people don’t mention, but never before I attempt to rattle the offending cage a little.

“Wow, thanks for the warm welcome.” I shot Eddie a bristling look as I proceeded to the fridge to dump more creamer in my too-strong coffee. “Good to see you, too.”

“I apologize for being rude,” Eddie said quickly enough, though his expression indicated that forlorn had turned to stewing. “I just never get to work with him anymore.”

 _That’s because he purposefully hired me to take all the coverage shifts, so he wouldn’t have to deal with you as much._ “Well, look on the bright side: maybe you can use the opportunity to come out of your cave and actually talk to me. Maybe get to know me, then decide whether you need to be in a shitty mood every time we work together!” After that little outburst, I congratulated myself with a triumphant nod and took my coffee right back out to the cash wrap even though we weren’t supposed to do that. If Jeremy Blaire had nothing better to do than watch the cameras, I figured, I’d earn my written warnings all in one day while I was still new enough to be forgiven.

It took several minutes, and I was careful to make the rest of my coffee last that long. I was about to crack from the boredom of standing my ground, when I heard Eddie walk up to the mouth of the hallway. He addressed me with his usual subdued sort of politeness. “Your attitude leaves much to be desired.”

I half-turned, barely regarding him. “ _My_ attitude? Really?”

“I was rude, too, but I had the decency to apologize.”

Already, I could see the wheels of manipulation turning in his head. I decided to meet him only halfway with my candor. Sarcasm would lose its effect over time; I needed to conserve that. “What I said still stands, though. It shouldn’t matter how I said it.” No direct apology. On top of that, I crossed my arms to appear as resolute as possible.

Eddie took a deep breath and glanced aside. Finally, posturing like he was the one making the huge sacrifice of pride to do so, he pressed a palm to his chest and said, “I’m sorry I’ve been short with you. You’ve been…” –he didn’t want to say friendly, because I hadn’t been—“…nothing but honest. If you’d like to sit in the sewing room while I work on a few things, the invitation is open.”

I waited until he met my eyes and held the look. He knew I’d heard every word but wasn’t about to thank him for the decency. Unimpressed, I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe,” I said; no commitment, no gratitude, just a _maybe_ before I walked over to busy myself with sizing the cocktail dresses.

Maybe there would still be time for him to earn a compliment from me, because it was a struggle to steel myself completely against his charms. I saw right through the more pedestrian attempts at smoothing me over, of course, but that’s what made me keep thinking about it. Eddie was smart, and though I wasn’t about to fall into that trap of feeling like I’d be _different_ – to quote Paul and anyone who ever tried to be the exception to someone’s rule – I wanted to see how far he’d bend. On top of the physical attraction I’d been barely reining in since we first met (which remarkably wasn’t waning at all, fuck my life), I was now fully aware via firsthand account that Eddie pulled no punches in the sexual arena. On some level I didn’t care about the complicated caveat Paul threw in near the end of our conversation; his face alone during our short talk had shown me enough. He wasn’t struggling to get over his feelings for a toxic, gaslighting asshole anymore, no - it was more about trying to adjust to no longer having explosive orgasms on tap.

Maybe I wasn’t Eddie’s type, of course – Waylon and Paul were both downright delicate compared to me, both of them lean and long-limbed, on the shorter side of average. Being over six feet tall with a body that had filled out well since puberty, I wasn’t exactly a damsel. Not that I was Hugh Jackman, either, but I couldn’t help feeling that there was at least _one_ kernel of honesty to what Eddie claimed about himself, and it concerned the sort of person he was attracted to. My feminine wiles were limited, if any.

I probably should have been thankful for small mercies, but I’m nothing if not stubborn. It’s not so much about getting what I want; it’s about my stupid need to keep at it until the conclusion is clear. I was armed with just enough knowledge to be cautious, but still keen on the idea of tapping that so hard I’d need to be sewn back together.   

Eventually, I couldn’t get it off my mind, even after I failed to convince two separate women to buy the same ludicrously glittery Elie Saab gown. The more desperate my need for distraction, usually, the better my sales skills. At Murkoff’s, no one was buying. I decided to take the invitation to enter Eddie’s private domain, whatever it would mean.

I crossed the threshold of the sewing room and Eddie glanced up at me, not smiling but also not giving me a death glare for once. Unsure of how to launch into a conversation after building so much tension around it, I took the empty chair next to the long table strewn with half-drawn patterns, handwritten notes, panels of fabric, and what seemed to me like a random assortment of unrelated crap. The place was a mess, but it was the sort of creative mess I could forgive. Within moments my attention turned to Eddie’s hands, which were hard at work on something – judging by the pure white fabric and the pearls he was stitching on one-by-one, it was a wedding gown.

Absolutely engrossed in the work, he didn’t notice me staring. Before I knew it I was engrossed as well. I’d never taken a good look at Eddie’s hands before. That had been an oversight. The task in progress was intricate and he handled it deftly, which shouldn’t have been a surprise considering his profession. Again, I’d let presumption cloud my mind, and I figured a guy big enough to toss me over his shoulder (if I was lucky…?) wouldn’t have such long, elegant fingers, and such a feather light touch with that needle and thread, moving it up, holding it out, passing it back down, through, again, up, out, down, through…

“Are you watching the floor?” I sucked in a sharp breath as Eddie’s voice rumbled through the silence of my trance state.

Recovering, I leaned back in the chair and glanced around the corner, through the hallway. From that angle I glimpsed a sliver of the sales floor. “Yes,” I said, and let the chair fall back to all four legs.

I could swear I saw Eddie smirk, just before he lifted the thread to his mouth and bit through it. I actually _felt_ my pupils widen at that, but caught my breath quickly and looked around.

“Is that a wedding dress?” I asked, realizing too late how stupid the question sounded.

“It is,” he answered. Eddie wasn’t the sarcastic sort, and so didn’t call attention to stupid questions. Lovingly, he trimmed the edge of the stich, and held the garment up by the bodice. “I’ve been working on it for some time. I don’t like to rush these things, so when the feeling strikes, I spend an hour or two with it.”

“Oh yeah? It’s pretty.” I was as sincere as I could be without overstepping my knowledge of fashion. “Is that for a client?”

Eddie’s face softened as he gave a gently blissful smile. He hummed for a moment, just a high-pitched thrum from his throat before he laid the dress alongside the sewing machine and turned his attention to me. “Not particularly. It’s a pet project. Sometimes I’m… inspired… to work on my own collection.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s cool.” Because I wondered, sometimes, what exactly he did in the hours he spent sequestered from the rest of the business, I saw my chance to ask, “So are all the client alterations finished?”

“Yes,” he muttered. “I usually finish those in the first couple of hours. Unless I have a rare evening fitting – and there haven’t been many appointments lately, sadly – I work ahead and try to refine what I’ve already done. Sometimes I’m inspired, and so I work on my own projects in the time left over.”

“Cool.” I’d only seen glimpses of his custom designs, mostly through photographs displayed here and there, and in the albums kept with the special order catalogs for customers. Eddie tended toward classic styles, and according to what Waylon recited to interested customers, took most of his inspiration from vintage couture houses. Something about focusing on line and proportion and flattering the figure, blah blah blah traditional femininity; people who knew what he was talking about seemed impressed, at least.

Silence took over again, less tense for once, but no less awkward. Even so, I wasn’t about to leave the sewing room. I’d earned my right to be there, especially if it made Eddie even a hint of uncomfortable. I leaned back again to check the sales floor before prefacing a sudden rush of fearlessness with, “Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

If I were Eddie (let’s not think too much about that), with his history of workplace peccadilloes and all those rumors, I’d have been just as suspicious in answering. “Yes… I suppose I can’t stop you from asking, at least. Whether I’ll answer or not…” He tilted his head, leaving the obvious conclusion to that statement understood.

I nodded – that was fair – and found a spot on the wall to focus on as I asked, “How unusual do you think it is, to be into the whole, you know, domination and submission thing, but not really shit like chains and whips and all? You know, not… _kinky._ ”

At first I had the feeling that he saw right through me, the way he was staring, silently gauging whether I was serious. “That’s an interesting thing to bring up at work.”

“I’m sorry. If that was too much, I’ll just keep it to myself.”

“Not necessarily.  Not too much. I do, however, continue to be surprised by your level of nerve.”

I laughed to myself and, finding nowhere to prop my feet up, I just sat as comfortably as possible. Admittedly, I splayed a little bit. “Again: I have no filter. I’m not asking to shock you, I’m just pretty open in what I talk about, and… I’m wondering. How common that is.”

Well, I hadn’t been banished, at least. Eddie’s attention fell to something on the table in front of him; upon further inspection, it was a sketchbook, but I was too focused on my train of thought to leave him to it. He let me chew on the silence for a bit, and then asked, in an almost curious tone: “The psychological aspect, then?”

“I guess,” I matched the timbre of his voice. “That’s only part of it. Getting pushed around a little, too. But it’s almost like, say that and people expect the whole _50 Shades of Grey_ scene, and… whoa, no thanks. The middle ground is difficult to explain.”

“This is about you, if I’m correct?”

I considered saying “ _no, I’m asking for a friend_ ,” but held myself back. The joke might not be appreciated, and I had to conserve my sarcasm. “Yeah, just something I’ve been turning over in my brain. Thinking over old relationships and stuff, communication lapses, disappointment.”

Unexpectedly, Eddie sounded amused by the confusion I was probably playing up a little too much. “Somehow, Mr. Upshur, it’s difficult to imagine you being pushed around.”

He meant it derisively, but of course I took it as a compliment. Especially the way he said my name like that – _Mr. Upshur_ – I didn’t hear that too often, and especially not in such a borderline-teasing way. “I like to consider myself rather unfuckwithable, but we’re talking about kinks here.”

“That’s such an ugly word,” Eddie ‘tsk’ed, voice going suddenly sharp.

“Unfuckwithable? I’m sorry, I thought it was too ridiculous to be offensive.”

“No, the other one.” I almost laughed. Of course he’d claim to be above a word like “kinks”. Of _course._

“Is there a better one?”

“Deviances, maybe?”

I coughed to cover the next laugh, which I couldn’t stifle. “That’s a new one.”

Lifting his head quickly, Eddie glanced at the clock. “We only have about thirty minutes until closing. My, how time flies.”

With a snort of agreement, I figured the subject had run itself out. I’d tried, at least. And hopefully I’d planted a seed of intrigue. Just as I was about to stand up and announce my intentions to start printing out the night’s paperwork, though, Eddie picked the thread of conversation right back up. “So… when you say that, you mean things like being pinned to a wall?”

I stopped, not quite relaxing back into my seat.

Eddie clarified. “For instance.”

I was still replaying that _Mr. Upshur_ in my mind and now Eddie was saying more things I wanted to pay very close attention to. Preemptively, I closed my legs. Just in case things got incriminating. “Yeah.” I tried to sound nonchalant about it. “I’d be into that. I mean, I am into that.”

An interestingly slow breath moved Eddie’s shoulders, and I barely heard the little “Hm” he gave. “Being held down, maybe tied up?”

“Ehhh, the tied up thing would require some convincing.” I only said it as a precaution. In reality, that was a big ol’ Hell Yes under most circumstances. “See, that’s where it gets weird to classify myself as having that preference.”

This was all bait, and I was still slightly thrown off that he seemed to be taking it. I’d figured this out long ago, actually, and I felt ashamed of myself for oversimplifying it. However, I hardly expected someone like Eddie to assure me I wasn’t weird at all, much less advise me that real people communicated and established boundaries.

He nodded, and with one finger pushed the sketchbook away to show I had his full attention. “You like a bigger man to put you in your place and keep you in line, don’t you?”

My ears and face went hot and I was grateful for a complexion that didn’t make such moments embarrassingly obvious. Even so, I was very happy I’d already closed my legs. Swallowing to catch my breath, trying to play it off, I laughed. “Yeah… I guess so. But just sexually. There’s a time and a place. Like I said… unfuckwithable.”

“That’s interesting.” Eddie stood up. He turned around to deposit things in various compartments lining the wall behind him, and the view of his snug, perfectly tailored trousers was unfairly distracting. I stopped myself just short of physically reaching out. There was no way he didn’t know he was keying me up. No way he wasn’t at least a tiny bit wise to what I was getting at. “I’ve rarely heard that perspective. Some people must feel like that, but hopefully they’re smart enough to be ashamed of it. It isn’t very flattering, after all, is it?”

He turned to me again, and after my eyes snapped back up to find his face, I parsed the meaning of what he’d said. I didn’t hesitate to twist my face into something more incredulous, though I didn’t feel like honoring that nonsense with words.

Mild annoyance clouded his already stern look at my reaction, so of course Eddie kept defending himself. “It’s not a good image for a romantic partner. A wife. In your case, I suppose, a husband. Being shameless? Enjoying that? _Admitting_ to it? I don’t know… I don’t find it very appealing in a woman.”

Thank goodness he turned away again, unzipping a garment bag that presumably would hold the dress he’d been working on. I mouthed the words “oh my god,” to myself and almost laughed. Otherwise, I left it alone. This was the most elaborate theater of denial I’d ever seen.

But I needed to say something or he might continue on the soapbox. Not that it wasn’t entertaining; I couldn’t hold my laughter in forever. “So… do you want someone who’s boring in bed, or just someone who doesn’t enjoy sex?” I put as much disbelief into the words as I could.

Eddie smoothed out the front of the now-closed garment bag and glanced over his shoulder. He wasn’t as amused as I was, but I didn’t expect him to be. I’d wanted more of a rise from him, was all. “I want to be her everything. Not because I tick off some list of pre-established boxes, but because I help her discover she even has them.”

“Ahhh.” I nodded, taking that as my cue to begin an exit if closing procedures were to get done at all. Gesturing in bursts of wondering how to put it, I hesitated to say anything until I knew my very nature wouldn’t allow him to have the last word. “Okay, just… so you’re aware, virgins can have – what did you call them? – deviances too.”

“I just want a nice, loving girl with family values.” Eddie’s lip curled. Apparently he’d realized I wasn’t buying it, regardless of my reasons. “What does it even matter to you? What are _your_ standards? What do you even look for in a man?”

I wished I could prove him wrong, god I wished I had something to throw back at Eddie to warn him against judging me too harshly. The truth was the truth, though: “I’m not picky, honestly. At this point I’m just looking for someone hot who eats ass. The rest is just… play as it lays.”

I’d meant a golf metaphor by that, but considering the context it came out sounding even better. Eddie didn’t need to say he was surprised by my nerve this time. He just stared at me until I shrugged and left the room.     

Once I reached the register, I couldn’t remember how to count for a few minutes, but my brain eventually reconciled with me and I finished the paperwork without incident while Eddie checked the merchandise over. Like I’ve said, and like Waylon originally told me: it wasn’t a difficult job. We were usually ready to leave no later than 9:10, after which the custodial team at Murkoff’s made its nightly sweep of the building, locking up with the senior manager who stayed until midnight.

“I need to get my laptop bag and then we can go,” I told Eddie, moving past him in the hallway, toward the office. “If you’re ready.”

One step away from the office, I was grabbed. Just above the elbow, Eddie’s hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back, fingers gripping firmly.   

“What? What? What?” I prepared for the explosion that had no doubt been waiting for me, the terrible fate I’d been yanked away from at the last minute. Instead, I was wheeled around effortlessly, and just before my fight instinct caught up I was pushed into the wall behind the hallway door. Eddie held me by the shoulders, and my heart fluttered in my throat as I stared at him and wondered whether to be indignant. There had been violence about the moment, sure, but face-to-face, nothing seemed or felt particularly dire. Eddie only looked me in the eye for a couple of beats before glancing aside casually. “You know,” he said, “this is the only spot I’ve ever been able to find, in the entire building, that the security cameras don’t pick up. It’s only when the door is closed, but once it is there’s a lovely patch of four anonymous square feet.”

I glanced in the opposite direction, swallowing hard to wet my throat. He was so close and smelled _so good_ and his hands were still unmoving on my shoulders, his voice itching beneath my skin the more he talked.

“That’s good to know,” I whispered, rasping drily on the words. I cleared my throat, where my heart was still fluttering, and intended to go on. I wanted to say something, maybe ask him what he thought he was doing, but before I even finished getting the gravel out I lost my center again. Eddie’s hands were grabbing and my feet were twisting around and my chest hit the wall and it all happened so fast, there was no chance for a word in edgewise.

“Oh,” I managed only that; it was hard to conjure up the breath for much more, with Eddie holding my wrists over my head and pressing into me with his chest, and his thighs, and his _hips…_

He said nothing so I said nothing, I just bit my bottom lip and arched my back as much as I could, bending myself against him to get any friction I could. He waited. He waited for me to realize this was supposed to be exciting. Maybe he was giving me the chance to resist, if I was going to, but he had to know I wouldn’t. My heartbeat grew stronger, quicker in the silent stillness and Eddie leaned in close. His lips brushed the back of my neck, close to my ear, and if he had anything to tell me maybe it would have been right then. Instead, I just eked out a whimper and closed my eyes.

My wrists were freed but I kept them right where they were, breathing harder as those hands I’d finally taken due notice of started rubbing down my arms, over my shoulders, my sides, pressing into the suddenly red-hot small of my back. Motionless but trembling in all the right places when Eddie tugged down my cheap Dockers, I yelped quietly. I’d been unprepared for that, not that I was disappointed at all.

Not even a breath gave him away, while I growled into a few choice scrapes of erotic self-expression as he reached into my boxer shorts and groped me with those long, beautiful fingers. Absolute confidence was in every move and I couldn’t have been happier to obey any suggestion. He silently urged me to bend forward; I pressed my chest flat to the wall so my ass poked out enough to be an invitation. I trusted him about the cameras, but right then I couldn’t give a damn either way. What a perfect reason to get fired from a probably-dead-end job, and what a thrill to imagine being caught on shitty security footage as Eddie Gluskin stripped me from waist to ankles and squeezed handfuls of my ass with bruising intensity.

Breathless after another one of those growls scraped from my throat, I felt the needle calluses on his thumbs as he spread me open. The warmth of one breath tickled against me before he started licking, pushing, probing. _Oh, fuck,_ I started to realize once I’d moaned into my bracing arm, _he’s really doing it._ Moreover, he was doing it well, better than most even know how to do it, like it’s enough to just shove your tongue in there and sloppily go at it, because no, it’s fucking not. Eddie had practice, and everything was perfect for those few minutes. Terrified as I’d been at first to interrupt the proceedings, I began to gasp out cues and murmur my approval of certain tactics, and even though he continued the radio silence I felt him smiling, and his smug satisfaction radiated in every movement as he flicked his tongue rhythmically and deeply.

The next part, I expected even less than the oral ravishing. Pulling away from me with a wet suck that earned my sluttiest groan, Eddie wasted no time and _of course_ no words before pressing two thick fingertips against me, into me, slowly inside of me while I bit the heel of my wrist and whined. I was hard as fuck, aroused as much by the feeling of what he was doing as I was by – you guessed it – the psychological aspect of the whole situation. The thrill of it, the surprise of it, the fact that I was getting exactly what I wanted and he wasn’t saying a damned word; it was the best head rush I’d had in a long time. Cock twitching and dribbling as Eddie’s roughly questing fingers zeroed in, I clenched my fist and resisted the urge to punch the wall. A growl thundered in my throat and I canted back to him. He was nudging my prostate in a matter of seconds.

All things considered, I shouldn’t have been the least bit concerned with keeping up appearances, but I nonetheless wondered whether my active participation would shatter the mood. There was too much building up, though, and thus far he’d been conveniently ignorant of my struggling cock. My forehead hit the wall and I cried out “Fuck!”, overwhelmed and unconcerned when I decided to take some of the work into my own hands.

Eddie gave me a throaty rumble when I reached down and grabbed my cock, still teasing me with mercilessly tight and shallow movements.

When I came – just after I announced myself with telling moment of sudden silence, his mouth was back on me. It was one of the end-of-the-world orgasms that could have peaked with my own sudden death and I wouldn’t have cared because I was exactly where I wanted to be. Stubbornly, I kept on fucking my fist as long as I could, tensing around Eddie’s tongue until my cock let out its last desperate drops, not quite sure what I was going to do in the aftermath but determined to make it worth my while.

In case you’re used to this blog and its content as I’ve kept it for the last several years, you’re probably wondering if this is where I was going with the whole warning at the beginning, that this story wasn’t the usual.

So yeah, that’s where I’m going with it. If you’re still reading after that, congratulations. I wondered, for a while, whether to write about my time at Murkoff’s from a different angle, something more in keeping with my established themes. Playing it safe would have been _possible,_ sure, but there’s no way anything else that happened in those few short months could be nearly as interesting as that one night I nearly broke my finger stumbling in the dark to find the Clorox wipes so I could clean my own come off the wall.

Context, you have to understand, is everything when it comes to an anecdote like that. Besides, I’m warming up to the idea of writing all this smut. That’s a good thing for me, otherwise a borderline-pornographic memoir might be hard to put into words.

(That was foreshadowing.)

Eddie slipped out while I was cleaning, not that I felt even a flicker of anger that he didn’t offer to help. I don’t know I could have looked at him without turning into a stammering mess after that, much less carried on a conversation on the way to the parking lot.

Back at home, I watched three episodes of True Blood, mind racing the entire time, absorbing none of the onscreen events. I finally forced myself to stop thinking too much about it and attempt sleep around 4:00 a.m.


End file.
